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Popcorn Furniture organizes mental health webinar

In association with Good Karma, the virtual session dealt with anxiety and fear amid the COVID-19

Popcorn Furniture, India’s largest educational furniture manufacturing company, held a webinar on combating anxiety and fear amid the COVID-19 pandemic in adolescents, children and adults. The online seminar was part of the company’s month-longcampaign to spread awareness about mental wellbeing.

Students, principals and faculties of different schools from all over the nation like Springdales School, (Delhi), Springdales School, (Jaipur), DPS (Bhagalpur), Sunbeam School (Varanasi) and Ramjas School (Delhi) participated in the session. There were around 600 registrations and 300 participants including students, principals, parents and faculties. The one-hour webinar was followed by an interactive session.

Ms Deepika Goyal, Founder and Director, Popcorn Furniture, said, “Popcorn Furniture is India’s largest school furniture provider and we have over 5 million students who have been our happy customers. We wanted to serve our customers – children and their parents – in this crisis. The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to high anxiety levels and fear in the minds of adults as well as children. Each person has a different coping mechanism in stressful situations. Some people are more impacted than others. So, we at Popcorn Furniture built a campaign to help parents and children. We partnered with Dr Ranjan Ghosh of the Good Karma clinic, who is an experienced adult and child psychiatrist from America. The campaign has been running for about three weeks with tips about the 5 w’s of wellness. We have had contests, articles and advice on how to combat fear and anxiety in this difficult time to ensure the mental well-being of kids.”

Dr Ranjan Ghosh, MD Psychiatrist, Good Karma, said, “We are in an unprecedented time in history with regard to school and education. I have spent the better half of my career fighting for inclusion for all in education and not homeschooling. This considering the social-emotional well-being of children. Now we must adapt and teach this to teachers who will be giving lessons online and to parents at home.”

Dr Ameeta Mulla Wattal, Principal, Springdales School, said, “Feelings of self-doubt, stress and uncertainty, have overwhelmed adolescents, parents, young and old. Schools and colleges are shut, our places of worship have been closed, and comforting social gatherings, festivals, movie halls, restaurants, family get-togethers, that filled our lives in the weekends and holidays have been declared off-limits.”